20th October 2017

94% Of Our Employers Were Satisfied With Our Service

The Education and Skills Funding Agency’s latest employer satisfaction survey*, based on training in 2016/17, has found 4 in 5 learners and employers would recommend their learning provider. With an increase of six percentage points on last year’s results, 83 percent of learners and 86 percent of employers surveyed being ‘Likely’ to make a recommendation.

Employers surveyed also showed they were more satisfied with private providers compared to colleges but the gap is narrowing. 83 percent of employers gave sufficient employer feedback for private providers, compared to 77% for General FE colleges. Both findings are higher than last year’s, indicating that overall satisfaction is on the up across the sector.

But while private providers’ score has increased by 4.2 percentage points, colleges’ score has gone up by 9.7 percentage points, showing that colleges are improving their overall provision.

However, the survey highlighted a number of differences across company size and type of training.
Medium and large organisations, those with at least 50 staff members, were “generally more satisfied” than organisations with fewer than 10 employees, who were “generally less positive than average”.

There were similarly positive scores for the satisfaction levels of the training itself with employers, 80 percent of those surveyed rating their satisfaction with the provision as between 8 and 10, which is 2 percentage points higher than last year.

However, whilst the satisfaction levels of employers overall seem to be improving, the results still suggest there is some work to be done by providers across the sector when it comes to educating employers about the cost of training and how the Spring reforms have affected employers.

The majority of employer respondents – 67 percent – said they did not pay towards the cost of their training, while 24 percent said they did and eight percent said they did not know if they were paying or not. With such dramatic changes to the sector, it is important all training providers understand the role they have to play in educating and advising employers of all the costs and funding involved.

3aaa have a dedicated customer service department who contact employers and learners on a regular basis throughout their programme to gauge satisfaction levels and identify any problems or challenges early on and to ensure a solution is put in place. This isn’t their only function though, they also ensure employers are made aware of any changes or policy updates that may affect them.

Our customer satisfaction data for 2016/2017 showed that 94% of our employers were satisfied with our service and 94% of our learners were equally as satisfied. 3aaa continue to look at ways to improve the satisfaction and level of service our employers and learners receive throughout their relationship with us.

*The survey, carried out between April and July 2017, represented the views of more than 60,000 employers and was based on training in 2016/17.

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